Reading: by Anne Lamott from Bird by Bird - Some Instructions on Writing and Life (p. 179)
I remind myself nearly every day of something that a doctor told me six months before my friend Pammy died. This was a doctor who always gave me straight answers. When I called on this one particular night, I was hoping she could put a positive slant on some distressing developments. She couldn’t, but she said something that changed my life. “Watch her carefully right now,” she said, “because she’s teaching you how to live.”
I remind myself of this when I cannot get any work done: to live as if I am dying, because the truth is we are all terminal on this bus. To live as if we are dying gives us a chance to experience some real presence. Time is so full for people who are dying in a conscious way, full in the way that life is for children. They spend big round hours. So instead of staring miserably at the computer screen trying to will my way into having a breakthrough, I say to myself, “Okay, hmmm, let’s see. Dying tomorrow. What should I do today?” Then I can decide to read Wallace Stevens for the rest of the morning or go to the beach or just really participate in ordinary life. Any of these will begin the process of filling me back up with observations, flavors, ideas, visions, memories. I might want to write on my last day on earth, but I’d also be aware of other options that would feel at least as pressing. I would want to keep whatever I did simple, I think. And I would want to be present.
Reading: by Judith Viorst from Necessary Losses (p. 366)
I’ve learned that in the course of our life we leave and are left and let go of much that we love. Losing is the price we pay for living. It is also the source of much of our growth and gain. Making our way from birth to death, we also have to make our way through the pain of giving up and giving up and giving up some portion of what we cherish.
We have to deal with our necessary losses.
We should understand how these losses are linked to our gains.
For in leaving the blurred-boundary bliss of mother-child oneness, we become conscious, unique and separate self…
And in bowing to the forbidden and the impossible, we become a moral, responsible, adult self, discovering - within the limitations imposed by necessity - our freedom and our choices.
And in giving up our impossible expectations, we become a lovingly connected self…
And in confronting the many losses that are brought by time and death, we become a mourning and adapting self, finding at every stage - until we draw our final breath - opportunities for creative transformations.
Of Loss and Gain
A Sermon Delivered on November 7, 2010
By
The Reverend Axel H. Gehrmann
Yesterday Elaine, my wife, took Noah, our 16 year-old son, to the Department of Motor Vehicles. When they got home, Noah proudly pulled out his wallet and gave me a good look at his brand new driver’s license. He was clearly excited, and eager to get behind the wheel on his own. Not one to beat around the bush, he asked if he could go for a drive.
My first impulse was to answer, “No, of course not. You can’t drive a car.” But I bit my tongue. After all, he had a little piece of plastic that confirmed he can. So I let him go, and stood at the window with a sinking feeling in my stomach, as I watched him happily back out of the driveway. Knowing how easily distracted teenagers can be, I hoped desperately he would pay attention.
Watching the car disappear down the street, I had a distinct sense that one chapter of my son’s childhood was coming to an end, and with it a chapter of my life as a father.
I remember when Elaine and I were new parents. I was overwhelmed by the demands of caring for a boy toddler and an infant girl. I remember how older friends, whose kids were already grown, smiled knowingly and said, “These years go by quicker than you think.” At the time I thought, “yeah, right” - because as far as I was concerned getting through a single day seemed like a major achievement, and a week seemed like an eternity.
But now, watching my son drive the car away, and hearing my daughter tell me she plans to get a learner’s permit in two months, I am left scratching my head and thinking, “These years went by quicker than I thought.”
And in the course of these years, I have grown older. My hair is not what it used to be, and my body is showing signs of wear and tear. My own father died a few years ago.
* * *
Life is all about loss. This is the point Judith Viorst makes. When we grow up, we give up the close bonds to our parents. The attention and support that was crucial for our survival before we knew to how to walk, or to keep our fingers away from power sockets - this intense parental involvement needs to end, if we are to grow up, and take charge of our own lives.
This change is a loss. It is a loss for the child, who may miss what felt like unconditional love and support. It is a loss for the parents, who need to let go of their children, so that they can live a life of their own, a life of freedom and responsibility, filled with their own lessons of trial and error, success and failure - so difficult for a parent to watch, and yet a crucial part of the path toward maturity.
As we grow older, we need to give up some of the dreams we hoped would be fulfilled in our lives. We may need to give up impossible expectations we had of ourselves. And finally, as old age approaches, we slowly lose our physical abilities, our health, and ultimately our very life.
* * *
The Swiss-born psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross is known for her work on grief, which first reached a wide audience when her book On Death and Dying was published in 1969. Working with terminally ill patients, Kübler-Ross believed that people confronted with approaching death move through five distinct stages of grief - moving from initial denial, through a period of anger, to attempts to bargain with fate, to a sense of depression, and finally acceptance. We are likely to encounter these dimensions of grief not only when confronting our own mortality, but also when a loved one dies.
Over the years, Kübler-Ross’ model has been criticized, and certainly not everyone moves through grief in this five-step order. Some of us may go from depression to anger. Others may never try to bargain with fate, or never grapple with denial. Nevertheless Kübler-Ross’ ideas have done much to raise our cultural awareness to issues we face in confronting the reality of death and loss.
Death - especially our own death - is a reality most of us are happy to ignore. Thinking about it can depress us. Talking about it can seem morbid. But this is not the way Kübler-Ross thinks about it.
She says,
“Death is the key to the door of life. It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you’ll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do. You live your life in preparation for tomorrow or in remembrance of yesterday, and meanwhile, each today is lost. In contrast, when you fully understand that each day you awaken could be the last you have, you take the time that day to grow, to become more of who you really are, to reach out to other human beings.” (Death - The Final Stage of Growth, p. 164)
Death and growth, loss and gain, go hand in hand. In 1975 Kübler-Ross published a book entitled Death - The Final Stage of Growth, which includes an essay by Mwalimu Imara, entitled “Dying as the Last Stage of Growth.” He writes,
“My life… seems to be one long line of growth experiences. At one place, one way of living became something I could no longer envision myself as being a part of, something that put me out of phase with what I felt myself to be. I died to those situations and went through the agony of rebirth in a new city, a new country, a new job, and a new trade. When being a printer no longer felt right to me, the old nagging call to the ministry became stronger, I pulled up from my job, my business connections, my expensive tastes, and went to college for seven years to learn about the life-style of ministry… (p. 147)
Mwalimu Imara’s growth experiences led him into the ministry. Not just any ministry. They led him into the Unitarian Universalist ministry. And following his graduation from seminary in 1968, they led him to this church. Mwalimu Imara was our minister from 1968 to 1970. At the time his name was Renford Gaines. His continued growth involved changing his name to reflect his African heritage. It led him from UU ministry to hospice work, and also into Episcopalian ministry. Each of these steps involved dying to one way of life, and being reborn to another. Each of these steps were both painful and joyful.
Imara writes,
“Take a look at your own life. What were those moments of chosen separation and pain when you were about the business of your own growth, when all the hounds of heaven could not have stayed you from those acts of your becoming. We may seek new professions or new locations or simply begin to experience ourselves as new in a [given] situation - whatever the situation, our experience of our own growth is really filled with anxiety and fraught with a sense of danger, as it is with excitement and fulfillment, as it is with pain as well as joy. Human life, my life and your life, have potential for this growth experience from the first moment at birth until our last breath at death…
… Abandoning old ways and breaking old patterns is like dying, at least dying to the old ways of life for an unknown new life of meaning and relationships. But living without change is not living at all…” (p. 148)
Imara sees three distinct ways most people choose to deal with death. The first is to be depressed, disheartened and withdraw into oneself in the face of crisis. The second is to suppress negative feelings, to conceal them from oneself, to live in denial. The third approach - the approach he favors - he calls “religious.” In the face of loss, the religious response involves investing ourselves in creative and appreciative relationships. It involves reaching out to others.
Imara reminds us that as human beings we capable of a wide range of experiences and behaviors. We can be savage and cruel in one situation and loving and saintly in another. We can experience extreme horror one moment and be moved to ecstasy another. “We can… be rejecting and defensive at one life juncture, only to be transformed into an open, [loving] person at a later time.” (p. 155) Whether or not we are transformed, whether or not we are able to experience the greatest good our lives can offer us, this, Imara writes, has everything to do with our religious commitments. It has everything to do with what we hold to be true, with what we consider the source of meaning in our lives.
Our religious commitments are essential in times of personal transformation. “Each of us have our own special way of looking at the world and putting that experience together in some sort of coherent fashion, which helps us make sense of what we did, are doing or plan to do. Some call this our philosophy of life, others call it our theology. Call it what you will.” Our religious commitment is the commitment we make to “transform our lives in creative ways, regardless of our situation.” (p. 158) Without this sense of religious commitment and purpose, we too easily experience our lives as aimless and fragmented.
* * *
Any growth, any change, any transformation we experience brings with it loss as well as gain. No single life experience confronts us more directly with these dual dimensions, than the experience of death.
This is the lesson Anne Lamott learns when a doctor tells her to watch her dying friend carefully now, because the dying one is teaching us how to live. We are all mortal, after all. All on the same bus, heading for the same final destination. To be reminded of this simple and universal fact, provides us the opportunity to seize life more fully. It has the potential to rouse us from our boredom, to dispel the countless distractions of our lives, to pay attention and be fully present.
The recently deceased UU minister Forrester Church shares Lamott’s view. Church was diagnosed with cancer, and in the course of the following years had ample opportunity to reflect on the meaning of mortality. In trying to figure out how to die well, he discovered it has everything to do with living well.
The experience of approaching death spurred Church to get his affairs in order, to take care of unfinished business. We would all do well to take care of our unfinished business, because the truth is none of us know how long our lives will last. He writes, “Death may come as a thief in the night, but it cannot steal from you the love you have given away, the strength you have shown in facing’s life’s hardships, or the courage you have proved in quelling your inner demons.” (Love & Death, p.95)
Reverend Church offers ten suggestions on how we might go about taking care of our unfinished business - how we might reboot our life, if it has become dysfunctional or stale. He says, 1) Begin here… 2) Begin now… 3) Begin as you are… 4) Begin by doing what you can. No more, but also no less… 5) Begin with those who are closest to you… 6) Begin by turning the page. Today you can open a new chapter of your life. If you are trapped in your story… revise the script. Practice a new line or two… 7) Begin by cleaning up your slate. Don’t erase the past. File it by experience, to keep it handy should you need it. But don’t obsess over it…. 8) Begin by looking for new questions, not old answers. Answers close doors. Questions open them… 9) Begin with little regard for where your path may lead. Destinations are overrated. And never what we imagine… 10) Begin in the middle. Our lives will end midstory, so why not begin there? Don’t wait around for the perfect starting pistol. Or until you are ready. You may never be ready.… “Finally, before you begin, a bonus suggestion - begin small. Dream possible dreams. Set out to climb a single hill, not every mountain.” (p. 97)
* * *
Yesterday a chapter of my life ended, and today a new chapter begins. Noah is driving a car. My son’s travels - like all of our life journeys - will be filled with dangers and excitement, pain and joy, loss and gain. None of us know where our road will take us. What we do know, is that to drive safely and to live well, we need to pay attention.
May we muster the love, the strength, and the courage needed to live well.
May we pay attention to the wonder and beauty life offers us.
Beginning right here. Beginning right now.
Amen.
